


Deceptively Honest

by MechanicalBones



Series: The Other Side Of Paradise [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gavin & Nines are actually rlly cute in this js, He loves Gav through & through, Heist, Honestly idk what to tag bc this is just something short & fun, Human AU, Idiots in Love, M/M, Nines is a good boy, thief!Gavin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23054980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MechanicalBones/pseuds/MechanicalBones
Summary: Gavin & Nines are bored of their jobs as homicide detectives. They both want a thrill. So, to give Nines that thrill of having the perfect criminal to catch, Gavin executes a heist of jewels that remind him of his partner’s eyes.Alternatively: Homicide detective turned jewel thief, all in the name of love.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Series: The Other Side Of Paradise [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656856
Comments: 6
Kudos: 88





	Deceptively Honest

**Author's Note:**

> This may be the most light-hearted bit of fun I have ever written, who knew I could write Nines to not be a total asshole;)  
> Happy reading, if you do!

_“A man’s alter ego is nothing more than his favourite image of himself.”_

_~ Frank W. Abagnale_

A lot could be said about Gavin Reed from the few people who knew him. Rough around the edges but with a good heart, unapologetically arrogant yet somehow still a good person. 

Well, _almost._

Working for Detroit’s police force for ten years had given him a fair amount of knowledge when it came to homicides & burglaries. He had solved case after case in that regard & had come to pick up not only the tricks that would help him catch the bad guys, but the tricks that the bad guys used to get away with, well, literal murder.

Not that they ever did get away with it. Not when Gavin was given the case.

Ten years of seeing criminals fuck up in almost identical ways sort of irritated Gavin, in a way that it probably shouldn’t have. The slip-ups & mishaps were just so damn obvious, it made him angry that the criminals hadn’t just done some better planning.

Sure, catching a murderer always felt fucking great; but the cases that were particularly fascinating to Gavin were the burglaries that people so very nearly got away but just... didn’t.

Over & over again, he watched as the criminals fell into the same patterns of growing sloppy & deep down, he wanted an actual fucking challenge.

He wanted a criminal so notorious that they made him grow more & more crazy with the fact he could just never quite catch them, even though they were _right there_. He wanted a criminal that relished in the fact they could just slip through his very fingers. 

Gavin wanted, no, he _needed_ the fucking thrill.

_‘You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.’_

The quote from an old movie floated around Gavin’s mind as he secured the gas mask onto his face. He pulled the pins on the modified tear gas grenades he had stolen six months prior from the gun locker at the precinct & dropped two of them into a vent.

He knew the vent led into the main room of the jewelry store that he was currently perched on the rooftop of & a smug grin sat on his face from beneath the mask.

Months of planning, half a year to be exact, had gone into preparing for this heist. He had carefully gotten the weapons together that he would be using & _none_ of them were guns. 

This wasn’t about killing someone or scare tactics. 

No, this was a game.

It was a strategic plan to prove that a heist of high caliber could be pulled off without him getting caught & with no casualties.

What did you take him for? A fucking criminal? He was Gavin fucking Reed! Homicide detective of ten years turned jewel thief & who would have thought it?

Thing is, he also needed someone to take his place on the force, someone who was just as into a challenge as he was. 

Thankfully, Fowler had decided to take on a few new detectives that had transferred from another precinct on the other side of town eight months prior.

That was how Gavin landed his partnership with pretty, handsome & awkward; AKA Richard Stern AKA ‘Nines’.

People only ever called him Nines, fuck knows why. Gavin sorta loved it though, it was almost… mysterious. Before all this, he never got a chance to ask him why he went by Nines & maybe now he’d never get an answer.

Prior to his heist planning, Gavin had two months of being partnered with Nines, two months of his focus being solely on his partner & their dynamic was strange to say the least.

Gavin was a flame. A hot headed, loud mouthed, arrogant prick & Nines was the polar opposite. Nines was calm, quiet & every action of his seemed calculated, as though he were always five steps ahead. 

He was intoxicating & was exactly the type of person Gavin knew he wanted to play his little game with. 

He knew next to nothing about his partner besides the fact the guy was a damn good detective, fucking gorgeous & that they barely spoke during the cases they had solved together.

Outside of the cases, however? They had their moments; like sparks, almost. It was difficult for Gavin to explain because it was something he had never experienced before.

One drunken night out, maybe it being more drunk on Gavin’s behalf than Nines’, seeing as the guy was barely even buzzed; they had bonded over their mutual love for all things puzzling & challenging. They loved the difficult cases, the cold cases, even fucking Rubix Cubes - anything that had a shadow of complexity surrounding it.

Gavin had seen Nines as a puzzle in the beginning, trying to find an algorithm so they could work amicably given their naturally opposing personalities. If the way Nines looked at Gavin was anything to go by, how he looked at him in the same way he looked at those fucking high-IQ crosswords he loved doing so much, then Nines thought the same way.

Gavin had stumbled towards the bar’s exit after waving goodbye to his coworkers, ready to trek back home because sure, he could be stupid, but he wasn’t stupid enough to drunk-drive.

Then, a warm hand above his elbow stopped him in his tracks & Nines offered to accompany him on his journey home to be sure he got back safely. Gavin agreed. 

Nines slung his arm around the man’s shoulders to help keep him walking in a straight path & Gavin had leaned into Nines’ warm side almost the whole way back. 

Once at his apartment door, Gavin invited Nines inside. Nines agreed.

That’s when Gavin had kissed him. He didn’t even know why, he just did & Nines pulled back.

“You’re drunk, Gavin.”

“Not drunk enough to not give my consent.” Gavin had joked as he leaned back against the door, his head swimming. Yeah, he was most definitely too drunk for this. 

Thankfully, Nines was a good fucking person & the taller man carefully helped Gavin into his bedroom. He even helped the man change into a pair of sweatpants when Gavin had proceeded to fall over while trying to get his fucking jeans off.

“Goodnight, Gavin.” Nines had said as he headed towards the door. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.” He spoke as if the kiss never happened.

Thing is, Gavin had wanted to kiss Nines the second he laid his eyes upon him, he just never had the courage. 

Who knew liquid confidence was a real fuckin’ thing.

“Don’t leave me.” Gavin had rasped out, patting the space beside where he was lying on his side in his bed. After a moment’s hesitation, Nines disappeared out of Gavin’s bedroom, pulling the door to an almost close behind him. 

After that, Gavin immediately passed out; a sour feeling sitting in his gut, & it wasn’t from the alcohol. 

But when he woke up with a pounding fucking headache, the smell of something sweet filled his nostrils. He stumbled out of bed & dragged himself out of his room & towards the kitchen to find out where the fuck the smell was coming from. Had Tina let herself in? No, she was with Chris & Nines’ brother all night.

Fuck. _What the fu-_

“Good morning, Gavin.” That familiar, soft voice floated through the air & the fucker didn’t even look up from where he was focused on cooking in Gavin’s kitchen. 

It took Gavin far longer than it should have for everything to click into place. For a smart guy, he sure was an idiot at the best of times. 

He made his way slowly over, leaning against the counter beside where Nines was cooking. His partner’s curly-but-not-quite hair was disheveled, shirt a little crinkled. 

Oh! _Oh._

Nines hadn’t left. He had stayed the night.

_Oh my god, he had stayed the night._

Nines had slept on the couch?

“Blueberries or raspberries?”

“Huh? Wha-Oh. Uh, blueberries.” Then, after a moment, he tacked a quiet ‘please’ on the end.

So Nines made him blueberry pancakes. He then made raspberry for himself & they sat together on Gavin’s couch in silence as they ate them. It wasn’t an awkward silence either, it was actually rather comfortable. 

Once they were both finished & Gavin had replenished his energy levels with his morning coffee, he sleepily rubbed at one of his eyes & was about to start on his fucking apology for his drunken actions.

Instead, what came out was, “You stayed.”

“Of course I did.” Nines responded, his eyes warm with a smile never quite graced his lips. _“You asked me to stay.”_

He. Stayed.

Gavin could feel the soft flush that crawled its way onto his cheeks & refused to budge. For a moment, he ducked his head in favour of looking down into his empty coffee mug so Nines couldn’t see. 

In response, his partner stood from the couch & made his way over to the kitchenette to get in front of where Gavin had gravitated to standing by his coffee machine.

“Do you remember last night?” Nines asked gently, using the tip of his finger to ever so softly tilt Gavin’s head up to look at him. His gorgeous silver-blue eyes were sparkling in the light that was bleeding through the kitchen window from the sunrise opposite. 

Fuck, he was pretty.

“Yes.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

There was a brief pause, a contemplative one on Nines’ behalf. Then, “Can I kiss you back this time?” 

Nines had asked in such a polite manner & Gavin couldn’t help but laugh. With an amused smile, he nodded & before he got the chance to do anything, one of Nines’ hands found its way to Gavin’s cheek, the other resting on Gavin’s hip to pull him closer as he pressed their lips together.

What started off as gentle & chaste, turned into a heated, needy kiss that was messy, but everything that both men wanted. The lingering taste of raspberry that was sweet on Nines’ tongue mingled with the blueberry still on Gavin’s & created a summer fruit punch that was damn near fucking perfect.

After that, their dynamic fell together with seamless effort. When Gavin got angry, Nines calmed him down & when Nines got stressed over his misunderstanding of social cues, Gavin was there to help.

They just _worked._

They joked about how stupid criminals were to always get caught & Gavin had come to learn that Nines wanted the same thing as he did; a notorious criminal to play cat & mouse with. 

A Joker to their Batman, a Frank Abagnale to their Carl Hanratty & every fucking time Nines spoke, Gavin would get just a little more lost in those sparkly crystal eyes of his.

Another four months passed until Gavin decided to take his indefinite leave of absence without notifying Nines. Or anyone, for that matter. That, somehow, was what had hurt the most - having to just up & leave with no explanation. 

He knew they’d meet again, in not that long at all, but it still hurt knowing Nines would be out there looking for him every day.

Over the next two weeks, every single night at precisely 11 P.M, there would be three knocks at his door, a minute of silence, another three knocks, another minute of silence & then one last set of three knocks. _Nine_ in total. But Gavin never answered.

Sometimes though, he’d look through the peep-hole, just to see Nines’ face again.

If he never got caught, he’d return one day. Maybe to a different precinct, maybe in a different city. But one thing he was sure of, was that he wouldn’t leave without his Nines. That when this was all over, he was getting his Nines back.

He just wanted to give Nines exactly what he wanted. The thrill of having his very own bad guy.

Climbing down the ladder from the side of the rooftop, Gavin headed inside the jewelry store via the back entrance that led into the security maintenance room that he had scoped out two & a half months prior while working one of his final cases.

He stepped over the bodies of the two security guards that had passed out from the gas & then pulled on a pair of black, leather gloves. He grabbed one of the security guard’s wrists, yanking his hand up to put it on the handprint scanner to unlock the computers & dropped the man’s arm again with an amused smirk on his lips.

Once the computers were unlocked, he used a code that he snagged from one of Elijah’s computers with his sticky fingers. It barely took him a few minutes to work through the alarm systems & disable them for ten minutes. Sure, he could have edited the code to have it keep the systems offline for longer, but where was the fun in that? The only systems he was sure to scramble indefinitely were the security cameras. Just to be sure.

With the alarms now powered down, Gavin made his way into the main jewelry store, glancing around at the unconscious bodies around him from the gas grenades he had used.

Something he hated was the way criminals always decided to hold up stores & banks with guns & threats. Creating a panic wasn’t going to make a heist go anymore smoothly than they would have liked, so why they chose to shove guns in people’s faces, he never understood. That was their first mistake. 

Sure, chaos could be good, but only when meticulously crafted to one’s advantage.

Unlike the criminals he had arrested in the past, Gavin wasn’t there to steal money. He also wasn’t there to smash every case & steal every jewel, watch, necklace or whatever twinkled in the light & caught his attention. 

He was only there for two very specific jewels that could not be found in any other jewelry store in the whole state.

Unbuttoning the maintenance jumpsuit he was wearing over the top of his sleeveless hoodie & jeans, he reached in to pull out the police baton from where he had strapped it to his thigh. The ex-detective then used it to smash open the glass that was encasing some of the finest blue diamonds that sat neatly on a black pillow. 

Attaching the baton back in it’s holster that was around his thigh, he stared in amazement at the jewels. They sort of reminded him of his ex-partner’s eyes.

Six months to the day, they had been on a stakeout. They had been sitting in Nines’ swanky, sleek as fuck, black CT6 Cadillac. They were chowing down on some of Nines’ favourite vegetarian Chow Mein while speaking about the infamous Bonnie & Clyde.

Nines was always so quiet while in the precinct, so when they were alone, Gavin loved every second of it. He really got to see Nines for, well, Nines.

“You think you’d ever do something like that, if you weren’t a cop?” Gavin had asked around a mouthful of food. Despite the obvious dismay in Nines’ features over Gavin’s lack of table manners, he shrugged. 

“Nearly did end up down that road. Not with a lover, though. Me & my brother got into trouble with the law a few times before we became detectives.”

“Fucking A. You mean to tell me that Connor fucking Stern has a criminal record? Puppy eyes? No fucking way. _You,_ I can see.” With emphasis on ‘you’, he pointed one of his chopsticks in Nines’ direction. “But not Con.”

“Ah, so you see me as a criminal? I should be offended, Gavin Reed.” The way Gavin’s name rolled so eloquently off of Nines’ tongue, he could never be mad when it was uttered. 

“Would you?”

“Hm?”

“Bonnie & Clyde. Do you think you could have ended up down that route? Would you ever do something like that?” 

“Depends on whether my love would run to the ends of the earth with me or not.”

Nines ate some more of his food & after a brief silence, he finally replied with, “So it is not about the crime, but about your love? That’s interesting.”

“Is it?” Gavin smirked, leaning over to flick Nines’ nose, earning a cold glare in response. The glare didn’t last long though. It softened into that warm look he adored so much & beneath the dim lighting of the car, Nines’ eyes were sparkling again, just as they always seemed to do when looking in Gavin’s direction. 

_That,_ was exactly why he had decided that these were the diamonds he was going to steal.

Not quite blue, not quite silver either. They were… perfect.

With a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, Gavin reached a gloved hand out to carefully take the two largest blue diamonds from their now smashed case. He held them up, twisting them in his fingers as he watched with a fascinated interest as the light sparkled through them. It cast tiny rainbows around him as he recounted all of the times he stared right at Nines & the rest of the world seemed to disappear around him. 

It was a similar feeling.

_Mission fuckin’ accomplished._

But, it was strange. He felt almost… underwhelmed. It had been _too_ easy.

His planning was flawless, the alarms would come back on in the next seven minutes, giving him just enough time to slip out the back & disappear off into the train tunnels that ran right below the store so he could head back to his apartment without raising suspicion.

He did it. He could leave; nobody would know. This was exactly what he wanted. To prove that he could do it, so why was this not enough?

 _Because it wasn’t what Nines wanted._

Nines wanted a challenge. Gavin wanted to prove a point. But, he loved Nines too much to not kill two birds with one stone & give Nines the damn fucking criminal that he wanted to chase just as much as Gavin wanted.

This was his game now. He was going to give Nines that challenge, all while never getting caught. He’d be just barely out of reach. He’d let Nines chase him all over the state, but Nines, the man who was always five steps ahead, would finally fall behind.

Just barely out of reach.

Slipping his hand beneath the jumpsuit, he tucked the diamonds into his jeans pocket. Gavin then hopped up onto the intact glass cabinet beside the one that he had smashed, sitting on the edge of it & started to swing his legs. 

The few people that were passed out on the floor would stay knocked the fuck out for at least another fifty minutes. So for now, he’d just patiently wait for the alarms to ring out.

Since this store had upgraded security measures, once the alarms came back on & sounded, an immediate alert would be sent to the nearest officers on duty. No need for someone to press an emergency button or for the security to make the 911 call... ah, technology.

Months ago, Gavin had dug up a cold case that had led to this district of town & every few weeks, he & Nines made a habit of coming to this side of the city to see if they could find anything that could help reopen the case. It was a long shot & they never found anything, but they did it nonetheless.

Gavin had been sure to pull off his heist on the day that he knew Nines would come to this side of town, even in the absence of his partner. With that in mind, if Gavin’s planning was correct, which, it always was, Nines would be the closest officer to this store & when the alarms sound out, Nines will be the first to be notified.

He wanted Nines & only Nines.

Two days prior, whilst dressed as maintenance, Gavin had very carefully wired up some very weak explosives beneath the store roofing panels, just above the main entrance. They were not strong enough to cause any damage to the surrounding areas, only to the area in which the explosives were rigged.

He had checked, checked & checked again to be sure that there was no possible way for the explosives to detonate unless he were to press his thumb to the tiny thumbprint scanner device he had crafted & that they were wirelessly connected to. 

He may be crossing a legal line or two with his thievery, but there was no fucking way he was going to kill anyone or injure them. Sure, these people were passed out for now, but they would live & they’d be okay. Well, maybe they would just get a headache.

Pulling the device from his other pocket, he threw it up & down, catching it as the minutes ticked down to when the alarms would sound.

When they finally began to ring throughout the store, a tiny grin began to tug at Gavin’s face from beneath the gas mask. It wouldn’t be long until his favourite detective would show up to the scene, armed & ready to arrest him. Not that he knew it was him. But he would. He had to know, it was their game.

“Put your fucking hands up where I can see ‘em!” A not so familiar voice shouted from the doorway when the cops finally showed & if he had to admit it, Gavin was almost upset that it wasn’t Nines’ voice demanding him to surrender. 

Thankfully, as he looked up to the doorway, he got to see his love standing there beside two other armed cops, gun trained right at Gavin’s chest through the glass doors.

With a smirk from beneath the gas mask, Gavin tilted his head slightly, holding both hands in the air with the detonator clearly visible in one of his hands. He glanced up at it before looking at the cops in the doorway & he waved that hand, gesturing with the other to signal an explosion. 

Yeah, that fucking stopped them in their tracks.

He knew they couldn’t open the glass doors that they were behind to arrest him because for fuck sake, Gavin was wearing a gas mask & bodies were visible on the floor. They had to wait for their backup to show, maybe their bombsquad too before they could get inside.

It’s okay, Gavin could wait. He was a patient man.

After what felt like an eternity of him casually sitting there, waiting for their backup to show & listening to the cops bicker between themselves over the best course of action, Gavin finally slid off of the cabinet & took a step closer to the door, all the while Nines just quietly watched from outside. 

Using his free hand to point straight at Nines, Gavin beckoned for him to come towards him with one finger, his other hand still holding the detonator on show for them all to see.

He wanted nothing more than to shout, to call out to his love, but he couldn’t give away just yet who he was to the other cops that could possibly recognise his voice.

Nines, despite being under pressure, seemed completely unaffected by the fact he was being beckoned into a building by a man holding a goddamn bomb detonator. Instead, the detective simply nodded, holstering his gun before conversing briefly with one of the women from the backup that had finally arrived.

After a short lived argument, Nines took the gas mask they were holding to him & carefully adjusted it onto his face. By his hand gestures, Gavin knew for a fact that Nines was telling the team to stay the fuck back until he gave them the signal to go in. Always in control. Always five steps ahead.

Nines headed inside the building, shutting the glass doors behind him as he slowly made his way towards one of the bodies first, eyeing Gavin as he crouched to check for a pulse.

“You didn’t want to kill them.” Were Nines’ first words. It wasn’t a question, more of an observation. Although his voice was slightly muffled due to the mask, getting to hear it again after going weeks & weeks without it had those sparks coursing through Gavin’s veins all over again. Fuck, he had missed him, he had missed him so fucking much.

“If you didn’t care for their lives, you would have pressed that button already. You were waiting here… You want a show.” More observations. Accurate ones, too. Nines stood from where he was crouched in favour of taking a step closer to Gavin while still making no attempt to draw his gun.

“Why me specifically? Why not Detective Roman or Officer Nakamura?” Nines asked & for a moment, Gavin almost forgot why the hell he was there. He was so overwhelmed with how much he had missed his partner, being in the same room as him once more had the power to take his breath away in a way that not even the gas without the mask on could accomplish.

“Because…” Gavin began, stepping over a body to get closer to Nines, taking a moment to awkwardly pull off one of his gloves, holding the detonator in his now non-gloved hand, his thumb hovering over the scanner. “...this is what you wanted, Nines.” 

Even through the mask, his voice was thick with emotion that was fucking unmissable & by the way he saw Nines’ eyes widen ever so slightly from behind the visor, he knew Nines recognised his voice - the man could anywhere.

“G-Gavin…?” Nines’ voice shook ever so slightly, his name spoken barely loud enough for Gavin to hear & that in itself was enough to break Gavin’s heart just a little. 

Gavin ever so subtly nodded, reaching out with his free hand to grab Nines’. He pulled the detective right against him as his thumb on his other hand pressed down on the detonator, triggering the explosives that he had rigged.

The explosion was nothing drastic, nothing that would cause the building to become suddenly structurally unsound, but it was enough to shake the room as the roofing collapsed in on itself in the doorway, blocking the path for any of the backup to enter.

Right as the dust & smoke engulfed them, Gavin wrapped his arms tightly around his love, holding him in a crushing embrace & his ever so slightly broken heart seemingly got stitched back up when the hug was returned. Nines’ hands curled into the back of Gavin’s jumpsuit as he whispered through the mask, “Gavin, baby, what have you done?”

_I'm giving you what you've always wanted. Your biggest challenge yet._

Gavin didn’t answer. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words never quite made it out of his throat, scared for if they saw the light of day, they would ruin everything.

The ex-detective instead pulled back from the embrace, resting his forehead against Nines’ for a moment, green-grey eyes looking right into the silver-blue’s that resonated so much with the diamonds that were now in his pocket. 

“I showed up at your apartment every day. Fowler said you had done something like this before. Disappeared off the radar & no missing persons search was needed as you were doing something confidential in regards to Cyberlife. _You left.”_

The sheer fucking hurt in Nines’ voice was so prominent, Gavin had to shut his eyes for the fear of seeing Nines’ well up was too much.

Ever so slowly, he used Nines’ drop of guard to his advantage; it was probably the cruelest thing he could have done, but he had to.

He used his gloved hand to grab Nines’ gun, yanking it from the holster as he made quick work of spinning Nines around, wrapping his arm around the man’s neck after pocketing the detonator & other glove.

Gavin flicked the safety off of Nines’ gun, pressing it to his temple as he led them towards the back entrance that he came through earlier. He knew full well that there would be a few cops out there armed & ready.

“You’re not going to shoot me.” Nines whispered & Gavin smirked from beneath his mask, another subtle nod from over Nines’ shoulder that he knew the man would be able to feel as he whispered back, “I could never, Nines. But they don’t know that.”

“So, what now?” Nines asked as they made it outside, surprisingly less cops around than either of them had expected. Nines’ hands came up to very slowly take off the mask he was wearing now he was back outside, throwing it aside as he put on a face of someone who was more fearful than they really were.

Gavin slowly backed away from the cops who were blocking the front entrance to the alley, yelling at him to let Nines go while he still could. He continued to back away until they were at the mouth of a conjoining alleyway that Gavin had mapped out, knowing it would lead to a few varying other back roads until it twisted back around to some subway steps that led right into the train tunnels.

Ever so slowly, the arm that Gavin had around Nines’ neck loosened just enough so he could push his own mask up just barely to give him space to lean up & plant a sneaky kiss to Nines’ ear.

“Catch me if you can.” Were the last five words Gavin whispered right after the kiss.

He pulled the mask back over his face, removing the gun from Nines’ temple & in one swift motion, he shoved the man forward, threw the gun on the floor & disappeared through the other alley.

He ran, following the route he had mapped out weeks in advance, taking every twist & turn until the sirens grew quieter. Stripping off his gas mask, he kept it tight in his hand until he snuck through the back entrance of a small thrift store. He used the overflowing stock room to strip out of his jumpsuit, emptying the pockets & stuffing the gloves & detonator into his jeans pockets instead.

Folding up the jumpsuit, he opened one of the boxes of clothes & slipped it inside before covering it with another box. These sorts of places kept clothes boxed up for years until stocks ran low, nobody would be finding that any time soon. 

He grabbed an old laptop bag from a rack & slipped his baton, its holster & his gas mask into it before making his way into the main store. Gavin put on his best lost & puzzled face until a friendly store clerk came over to ask if he needed anything. He smiled innocently at the old lady, shaking his head & after making a quick, casual conversation, he continued looking around as though he were simply another customer.

When her back was turned, he slipped on an oversized, washed out denim jacket that looked as though it had been pulled straight from the eighties & adjusted his sleeveless hoodie hood around it. He then put his bag over his shoulder & checked himself out in the mirror. 

Jacket over a hoodie, tight jeans & bright pink fucking sneakers. Yeah, he’d blend in just fine. Gavin looked like he was trying to pull back a fashion trend that died out over fifty years ago, not as though he just pulled off a heist.

And just like that, he slipped out of the store, heading down to the subway tunnels that were right below the very jewelry store he had stolen from, the weight of his stealings sitting heavy in his pocket.

He wasn’t entirely sure what happens next, the thrill of the unknown was so fucking enticing, he couldn’t wait to see what the future would hold. 

Would Nines chase him all by himself? Would Nines tell the precinct who the man was who had held him at gunpoint? The future of their little game was all in Nines’ hands.

From one train to the next, Gavin travelled for hours in the direction of Chicago. After all, there was an Art Institute that he always wanted to see there.

A few days prior, Gavin had installed a Ghost onto his phone so it could still be used without being traced. It masked his identity by simply latching onto others’ connections. One moment it appeared as though he were in Russia & the next, he was in England. Ever changing, ever scrambling, so if Nines did tell the cops who it was behind the mask, they’d have a damn field day trying to track his phone.

If Nines decided to go about this without giving any details to the people he worked with, then he’d have a hard time trying to catch onto Gavin’s trail too. Hell, Gavin wasn’t about to make this easy now, was he?

As day turned to night & Gavin relaxed into his seat on a train that was almost empty, his phone buzzed from within his pocket & the only name he wanted to see popped up on the screen.  
  


[Det. 9s - Mar 05 11:27 P.M]  
  


‘I’ll find you, my love.’  
  


And not a second went by that Gavin doubted it.


End file.
